The following disclosure relates to semiconductor manufacturing methods. In particular, the following disclosure relates to method for forming a contact to a semiconductor device.
The semiconductor industry has continually improved the performance of integrated chips by scaling the minimum feature size of integrated chip (IC) components according to Moore's law. However, in recent years, scaling of some IC components has become increasingly difficult. To alleviate the demands of scaling, the semiconductor industry has looked for other ways in which to improve the performance of integrated chips.
Strain engineering is often utilized to improve the performance of transistor devices. For example, by inducing a compressive stress onto a channel region of a PMOS transistor, the mobility and performance of the transistor is improved. By using strain engineering to improve transistor performance, the demands to scale an integrated chip design (e.g., to further reduce the gate dielectric thickness) are alleviated.